Waiting

I'm waiting for my cardiac catheterization on April 19th. That's all I can really say this week. That's all that's going on.

While I wait, I'm now taking a beta blocker and it's messing with me. Different side effects on different days, but basically I don't feel good. Dizziness, spaciness, tiredness, sometimes it feels like I'm feverish but I'm not. Nausea, constipation and diarrhea, often heartburn, a cough which might be a heartburn cough but might not be. I'm hungry all the time, for junk food, just when I'm supposed to be eating a plant-based diet for my cardiac problems. If in fact I do have cardiac problems. Have to wait for the cath to know for sure.

I think the beta blocker is also making me feel depressed, but that one's tricky, since obviously my situation could be making me depressed. I read that this particular drug, metropolol, can cause depression, but then I read about a big study that supposedly showed that beta blockers don't cause depression. But then I read that the study did not include any participants with known mental health issues. So what does that show? How stupid. OK, maybe beta blockers (in general) don't cause depression in people who've never had depression, but what about people who are prone to it? Is it possible that this one particular beta blocker that I'm taking can nudge people with persistent depressive disorder over the edge? Of course it's possible. Or at least, the study doesn't show at all that it isn't possible. Stupid.

***

Rocket Boy will be here on Saturday! I should think about that, because it's coming up sooner than the procedure, and it's a happy thing. I should work on cleaning the house this week before he comes, but that's tricky too. I don't have much energy and I shouldn't push myself. I'll try to give myself a small assignment each day and let it go at that. Some possibilities:

• Vacuuming
• Washing the sheets and blankets on our bed
• Cleaning up the living room
• Getting rid of a few piles of files
• Cleaning the bathroom -- not a full cleaning, just sink and toilet and whatever looks awful
  

That's five things -- it might be enough. I think for Monday I'll work on piles of files, Tuesday could be the living room, Wednesday the bathroom, Thursday the vacuuming, and Friday the bedding. Whatever I get done will be enough. Oh, somewhere in there I have to go to Longmont to get labs done before the procedure. Thursday, I think. Well, I can probably do that on Thursday and still do the vacuuming. Or I can do the vacuuming on Friday and wash the bedding on Saturday. It'll all work out. I have very low expectations for myself these days.

Oh, but I forgot -- Teen B is sick. Just a cold, probably, but he's sounding worse and worse. Maybe I should keep him home tomorrow and take him for a covid test. It's unfortunate, because they're in the middle of CMAS testing, but his next test isn't until Tuesday. Maybe I'll give him some cold medicine tonight, see if that helps at all. And if I have to keep him home on Monday, well, I'll just have less time to work on files. It doesn't matter that much.

On the other hand, if I catch what he has, and Teen A gets it also, we'll probably pass it on to Rocket Boy when he arrives on Saturday, and by Tuesday the 19th either I'll be too sick for the cath or he'll be too sick to drive me to Loveland and we'll have to reschedule everything!!!!!

I am not going to think about this right now.

***

I don't know if this is an effect of the beta blocker, or maybe some of my other meds, but I'm less interested in reading right now. By the end of March I had read 30 books, on track to read 120 books over the course of the year. But my pace is slackening. I read 10 books in January, 14 books in February, but only 6 books in March, three of which were books I read to the kids. So far this month I've finished 2 books. I've started three others, but I may not finish two of them (I have to finish the third because it's for the book group). When I climb into bed at night, I read for a few minutes and then I get tired and turn off my light. I'm also taking a lot of naps during the day. 

I think this must be depression. I am also not interested in my Barbie dolls right now, nor do I want to write anything.

***

I don't think I mentioned that I had my second orthodontia appointment, a week earlier than scheduled because I broke some of my braces. Dr. Walker told me, "Adults don't break braces," but it turns out that adults can and do, especially adults who have some crowns in their mouths, because braces don't adhere to crowns the way they do to real teeth. 

I managed to pop the braces off three different teeth (I think) and I also broke a wire on another tooth. I had two wires sticking into my gums, and I filled my mouth with dental wax to block the pain. To stick the braces back onto my crowns, they put the horrible things in my mouth that they use when they first put the braces on -- I don't know what they're called, but they make your mouth look kind of skull-like and they hurt. 

So now I'm trying REALLY hard not to break any more braces. But it's difficult. 

Still, I'm encouraged by the fact that a month has gone by. I got the braces on March 10th and it is now April 10th, so I've had them for one month, actually 31 days. I'm supposed to have them on for two years, i.e., 730 days, which means I have only 699 days to go. (Of course, if I keep breaking braces, it will take longer.) I can feel that my teeth are already moving, though, which is very encouraging. Already, there is not enough room in my mouth for the tooth that was pulled. The space is getting smaller.

***

I'm sure there was something else I was going to write about, but I can't think of it. It's OK. I'm just in waiting mode. Getting through the days with the kids is challenging, but at least they're mostly too wrapped up in their own worlds to worry about me. They know I have some stuff going on with my heart, but I think that's too abstract for them to grasp. They've never known anyone who had a heart attack. Their experiences of death have been elderly neighbors (two, now) who lived to be 100 or more. 

I, on the other hand, have plenty of experiences of death, too many. But I am trying not to share my worries with the kids. Trying just to have happy times with them, nothing special, just low-key pleasantness. Wordle, Quordle, Octordle, Sweardle, Heardle. Playing with the cats, going grocery shopping, making dinner, reading to them at bedtime. Normality.

At first, after I got the bad test results, I was afraid I would die suddenly. Every night I would wonder whether I'd wake up the next morning. Now I guess I've calmed down about that a little, partly because my diagnosis is up in the air, and partly because it's hard to stay scared for too long. I probably will NOT die in my sleep anytime soon, because of the beta blocker and the baby aspirin and the statin and all that. And if by some weird chance I do, well, that's life.